Category: Projects

A what now?

If you don’t know what a tricorder is, which we guess is faintly possible, the easiest way we can explain is to steal words that Liz wrote when Recanthamade one back in 2013. It’s “a made-up thing used by the crew of the Enterprise to measure stuff, store data, and scout ahead remotely when exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations, and all that jazz.”

A brief history of Picorders

The Raspberry Pi Foundation have seen other Raspberry Pi–based realisations of this iconic device. Recantha’s LEGO-cased tricorder delivered some authentic functionality, including temperature sensors, an ultrasonic distance sensor, a photosensor, and a magnetometer. Michael Hahn’s tricorder for element14’s Sci-Fi Your Pi competition in 2015 packed some similar functions, along with Original Series audio effects, into a neat (albeit non-canon) enclosure.

Brian Mix’s Original Series tricorder

Brian Mix’s tricorder, seen in the video above from Tested at this year’s Replica Prop Forum showcase, is based on a high-quality kit into which, he discovered, a Raspberry Pi just fits. He explains that the kit is the work of the late Steve Horch, a special effects professional who provided props for later Star Trek series, including the classic Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations.

This episode’s plot required sets and props — including tricorders — replicating the USS Enterprise of The Original Series, and Steve Horch provided many of these. Thus, a tricorder kit from him is about as close to authentic as you can possibly find unless you can get your hands on a screen-used prop. The Pi allows Brian to drive a real display and a speaker: “Being the geek that I am,” he explains, “I set it up to run every single Original Series Star Trek episode.”.

Read this blog on how to get started with David Whales BitIO library. (here)

Introduction

This code uses the Micro:bit as an interactive controller in Minecraft. You can read all about it in BitIO blog 1 here to fully understand how to set it up and run it. But suffice to say that the Brains behind it is David Whale. Over the course of the the last 8 months I have been integrating the Micro:bit into my Minecraft coding experiments.

I like to make things but am not very handy. Also my coding skills fall somewhere on the spectrum between lamentable and laughable.

For these reasons, I have to choose my projects carefully. Which is to say I need someone else to have already done the heavy lifting of fabrication and software development. Turning a 1990’s era Dualit Four-Slice toaster into a Raspberry Pi-based Google Assistant and internet radio was right in my sweet spot. Very Red Dwarf!

Why not just buy a Google Home or Amazon Alexa, you ask? Too easy! Also while many people seem to have no issues talking to a plastic speaker, I prefer to speak to a beautifully sculptured chunk of metal that also makes toast (NB. some care and electrical expertise is required here to avoid burning down your house).

The Google Assistant SDK allows easy deployment of the Assistant to a Raspberry Pi, and there are many tutorials on Youtube and elsewhere if further assistance is required.

What makes the Dualit ideal for this project (aside from iconic design status) is that it has plenty of unused real estate inside – room aplenty to stuff a Pi 3B, mini digital amp, OLED display, speakers, power supplies, and assorted other gubbins. If you prefer, you can omit much of this and output a line-level or Bluetooth signal to external components. The ends of the Dualit are aluminium, so easy to work with for the minor alterations necessary.

Of course, you can ask the Assistant to play the radio but I wanted dedicated physical controls – and a station indicator display. I had to write a bit more custom code for this side of the project but nothing outside my spectrum.